A new Sparta school? District administrators explore solutions to crowded building
The Sparta school district may soon include another school as officials work to address a lack of space for proper instruction in one building, the superintendent said at Thursday's Board of Education meeting.
The district is considering moving students in pre-K and kindergarten out of the Alpine Elementary School and into another school yet to be constructed, Sparta Superintendent Matt Beck said at the meeting. Alpine holds Sparta students in pre-K through second grade but has recently faced crowding issues that concerned parents have raised to the administration.
The district has selected a potential property, but Beck told the New Jersey Herald Friday that it is "still way too early in the process" to disclose the location or provide a timeline. An architect has created "rough drawings" for the layout, he said at the meeting, and an engineer is reviewing the feasibility of constructing a school on the site that conforms to township codes.
The Sparta district is currently comprised of five schools including Alpine; Mohawk Avenue School, for third-graders; Helen Morgan School, for fourth- and fifth-graders; Sparta Middle School, for sixth- through eighth-graders; and Sparta High School.
Beck attributed the Alpine space issues to a recent rise in enrollment and the expansion of pre-K and kindergarten from half-day to full-day programs, which doubled the number of rooms needed to accommodate students.
"While there is no doubt that those decisions were made in the best interest of education of our students and providing for our school community, they have certainly created challenges in the facility management of operations of Alpine School," he said.
District officials have spent the past several months looking into the space issue and brainstorming possible solutions to fix it, Beck said.
Beck and Sparta business administrator Joanne Black toured the Mohawk Avenue School with a county representative prior to winter break amid discussions of moving the pre-K and kindergarten students there. But the district learned a few weeks later that the classroom sizes at the school "no longer meet the minimum requirements" for those age groups, Beck said.
Sparta also looked into adding temporary modular school buildings to the Alpine property, but administrators nixed the idea because it would be costly and the buildings would take up space on the athletic fields. Other potential remedies include rearranging the grade levels in each building and reverting pre-K students back to half-day instruction except for special education students.
"This shift will be beneficial financially and operationally," Beck said of the pre-K option. "However, it would also reduce the level of pre-K programming we are currently offering."
Sparta administrators and board members are continuing to discuss the idea during the budget process, and the superintendent said the district will make a final determination "in the coming days."
This article originally appeared on New Jersey Herald: New Sparta NJ building may be one solution to school overcrowding
